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As city council paved the way for a casino, a family struggled with the loss of their home and income due to a gambling addiction blamed for a $200,000 fraud against a local business.

“You're not the first person that I've dealt with that has a gambling addiction,” Ontario Court Justice Jean-Gilles Lebel told the woman behind the fraud.

People have to travel if they want to feed their gambling habit at a casino, the judge said, noting the circumstances in this case had him distancing himself from making a political statement but questioning if it's a good idea to place a casino in a small community.

“If it was readily available, I wonder what that would lead to,” Lebel said.

The province announced in May it's expanding the number of gaming zones allowed in Ontario, and North Bay is among the locations eligible for a facility with up to 300 slot machines and a certain number of table games.

After months of public debate following that announcement, North Bay council voted in September to allow a casino in the city. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. process ends next week to qualify providers to operate gaming facilities in the North, and the request for proposal process is expected to begin later in the year.

Kimberly Howe, 44, pleaded guilty Wednesday to five charges of defrauding Canadian Tire out of $200,000 while she worked as a cashier at the store in North Bay between January 2007 and February 2011.

The judge accepted a joint submission of two years less a day that Howe can serve in the community under a curfew with orders preventing her from attending casinos and taking counselling if probation services recommends it.

Court heard Howe, a first offender, would attend Casino Rama in Orillia and tried to get counselling after her arrest but couldn't afford to continue her sessions.

“I just want to say I'm so very sorry for what I've done,” she said in a tearful statement.

“I worked there for 20 years. It's just like a family. I betrayed them all.”

Howe was given credit for paying back the money and preventing a costly trial involving years of paperwork and at least one unco-operative witness who was in a position to detect the fraud and was let go, court heard.

The Howes put their house up for sale, and the Ministry of the Attorney General seized the asset along with a bank account to recover most of the money, while members of the family helped repay the store.

Court heard there could also be a civil suit.

Howe was originally charged with defrauding the company out of $254,000.

Additional charges including possession of property obtained by crime and uttering a forged document were withdrawn as part of her plea.

Charges against her husband were also withdrawn.

Howe defrauded the store by producing false returns for castings or shells left over from batteries that are brought back for a refund.

A staff member identified three suspicious transactions in January 2011, and Howe couldn't back them up with appropriate documents, said Crown attorney Paul Condon.

The company kept an eye on her and found more false transactions with illegible names, and some documents were filled out in advance of customers making returns, Condon said.

She was arrested Feb. 14, 2011 after getting caught filling out more documents with illegible names for returned castings while there was no one at her register.

Howe admitted to North Bay Police Service she defrauded the store out of $2,500, but the business called police again a couple of weeks later after finding the frauds dated back to 2007, Condon said.